I have just disconnected from irc.freenode.net for the last time. You should do the same. The awful new de facto operators are using user numbers as a public justification for their behaviour. Specifically, I recommend that you:

• Move your own channels to to Libera or OFTC
• If you have previously been known to be generally around on Freenode, connect to Libera (the continuity network set up by the Freenode staff), and register your usual nick(s) there.
• Disconnect from freenode so that you don't count as one of their users.

Note that mentioning libera in the channel topic of your old channels on freenode is likely to get your channel forcibly taken over by the new de facto operators of freenode. They won't tolerate you officially directing people to the competition. I did an investigation and writeup of this situation for the Xen Project. It's a little out of date - it doesn't have the latest horrible behaviours from the new regime - but I think it is worth pasting it here:

Message-ID: <24741.12566.639691.461134@mariner.uk.xensource.com>
From: Ian Jackson <iwj@xenproject.org>
To: xen-devel@lists.xenproject.org
CC: community.manager@xenproject.org
Subject: IRC networks
Date: Wed, 19 May 2021 16:39:02 +0100
Summary:
We have for many years used the Freenode IRC network for real-time
chat about Xen.  Unfortunately, Freenode is undergoing a crisis.
There is a dispute between, on the one hand, Andrew Lee, and on the
other hand, all (or almost all) Freenode volunteer staff.  We must
make a decision.
I have read all the publicly available materials and asked around with
my contacts.  My conclusions:
 * We do not want to continue to use irc.freenode.*.
 * We might want to use libera.chat, but:
 * Our best option is probably to move to OFTC https://www.oftc.net/
Discussion:
Firstly, my starting point.
I have been on IRC since at least 1993.  Currently my main public
networks are OFTC and Freenode.
I do not have any personal involvement with public IRC networks.  Of
the principals in the current Freenode dispute, I have only heard of
one, who is a person I have experience of in a Debian context but have
not worked closely with.
George asked me informally to use my knowledge and contacts to shed
light on the situation.  I decided that, having done my research, I
would report more formally and publicly here rather than just
informally to George.
Historical background:
 * Freenode has had drama before.  In about 2001 OFTC split off from
   Freenode after an argument over governance.  IIRC there was drama
   again in 2006.  Significant proportion of the Free Software world,
   including Debian, now use OFTC.  Debian switched in 2006.
Facts that I'm (now) pretty sure of:
 * Freenode's actual servers run on donated services; that is,
   the hardware is owned by those donating the services, and the
   systems are managed by Freenode volunteers, known as "staff".
 * The freenode domain names are currently registered to a limited
   liability company owned by Andrew Lee (rasengan).
 * At least 10 Freenode staff have quit in protest, writing similar
   resignation letters protesting about Andrew Lee's actions [1].  It
   does not appear that any Andrew Lee has the public support of any
   Freenode staff.
 * Andrew Lee claims that he "owns" Freenode.[2]
 * A large number of channel owners for particular Free Software
   projects who previously used Freenode have said they will switch
   away from Freenode.
Discussion and findings on Freenode:
There is, as might be expected, some murk about who said what to whom
when, what promises were made and/or broken, and so on.  The matter
was also complicated by the leaking earlier this week of draft(s) of
(at least one of) the Freenode staffers' resignation letters.
Andrew Lee has put forward a position statement [2].  A large part of
the thrust of that statement is allegations that the current head of
Freenode staff, tomaw, "forced out" the previous head, christel.  This
allegation is strongly disputed by by all those current (resigning)
Freenode staff I have seen comment.  In any case it does not seem to
be particularly germane; in none of my reading did tomaw seem to be
playing any kind of leading role.  tomaw is not mentioned in the
resignation letters.
Some of the links led to me to logs of discussions on #freenode.  I
read some of these in particular[3].  MB I haven't been able to verify
that these logs have not been tampered with.  Having said that and
taking the logs at face value, I found the rasengan writing there to
be disingenuous and obtuse.
Andrew Lee has been heavily involved in Bitcoin.  Bitcoin is a hive of
scum and villainy, a pyramid scheme, and an environmental disaster,
all rolled into one.  This does not make me think well of Lee.
Additionally, it seems that Andrew Lee has been involved in previous
governance drama involving a different IRC network, Snoonet.
I have come to the very firm conclusion that we should have nothing to
do with Andrew Lee, and avoid using services that he has some
effective control over.
Alternatives:
The departing Freenode staff are setting up a replacement,
"libera.chat".  This is operational but still suffering from teething
problems and of course has a significant load as it deals with an
influx of users on a new setup.
On the staff and trust question: As I say, I haven't heard of any of
the Freenode staff, with one exception.  Unfortunately the one
exception does not inspire confidence in me[4] - although NB that is
only one data point.
On the other hand, Debian has had many many years of drama-free
involvement with OFTC.  OFTC has a formal governance arrangement and
it is associated with Software in the Public Interest.  I notice that
the last few OFTC'[s annual officer elections have been run partly by
Steve McIntyre.  Steve is a friend of mine (and he is a former Debian
Project Leader) and I take his involvement as a good sign.
I recommend that we switch to using OFTC as soon as possible.
Ian.
References:
Starting point for the resigning Freenode staff's side [1]:
  https://gist.github.com/joepie91/df80d8d36cd9d1bde46ba018af497409
Andrew Lee's side [2]:
  https://gist.github.com/realrasengan/88549ec34ee32d01629354e4075d2d48
[3]
https://paste.sr.ht/~ircwright/7e751d2162e4eb27cba25f6f8893c1f38930f7c4
[4] I won't give the name since I don't want to be shitposting.

comments

For small Qt-projects, I have for a long time been using qmake, mostly because qmake -project gives me a working build in most cases, but once the project grows a bit, I have switched to cmake because there is just things there I like better. So, I thought how to start with cmake instead, and ended up writing a small script. I guess I should share it:

#! /bin/sh # Simple script that generates a cmake project file for a Qt project #
# Copyright (c) 2013 Sune Vuorela
#
# Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
# obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
# files (the Software ), to deal in the Software without
# restriction, including without limitation the rights to use,
# copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
# copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the
# Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following
# conditions:
#
# The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
# included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
#
# THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED AS IS , WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
# EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES
# OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
# NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT
# HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
# WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
# FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR
# OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
# CPPFILES= $(ls *.cpp 2>/dev/null) UIFILES= $(ls *.ui 2>/dev/null) QRCFILES= $(ls *.qrc 2>/dev/null) NAME= $(basename $(pwd)) error()
echo ERROR: $@
exit 1
debug()
[ -z "$ DEBUG " ] && return
echo DEBUG: $@ 1>&2
# sanity checks if [ -e "CMakeLists.txt" ]
then
error CMakeLists.txt found. Doing nothing.
fi if [ -z "$ CPPFILES " ]
then
error No cpp files found
fi debug NAME $ NAME
debug CPPFILES $ CPPFILES
debug UIFILES $ UIFILES
debug QRCFILES $ QRCFILES # First part of cmake files
cat >> CMakeLists.txt << __EOHEADER__
project($ NAME ) cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8.11) find_package(Qt5 CONFIG REQUIRED Widgets) set(CMAKE_AUTOMOC ON)
set(CMAKE_INCLUDE_CURRENT_DIR ON) __EOHEADER__ # Handle ui files if any
if [ -n "$ UIFILES " ]
then
cat >> CMakeLists.txt << __EOUI__
set($ NAME _ui $ UIFILES )
qt5_wrap_ui($ NAME _wrapped_ui \$ $ NAME _ui ) __EOUI__ UIWRAPPED="\$ $ NAME _wrapped_ui "
debug prepared UIWRAPPED $ UIWRAPPED
fi # Handle qrc files if any
if [ -n "$ QRCFILES " ]
then cat >> CMakeLists.txt << __EOQRC__
set($ NAME _qrc $ QRCFILES )
qt5_add_resources($ NAME _wrapped_qrc \$ $ NAME _qrc ) __EOQRC__ QRCWRAPPED="\$ $ NAME _wrapped_qrc "
debug prepared QRCWRAPPED $ QRCWRAPPED
fi # Build the actual library
cat >> CMakeLists.txt << __EOCPP__
set($ NAME _src $ CPPFILES ) add_executable($ NAME \$ $ NAME _src $ UIWRAPPED $ QRCWRAPPED ) target_link_libraries($ NAME Qt5::Widgets )
__EOCPP__

I ve saved it locally as cmake-qtproject and it works with at least cmake 2.8.11. I hope wordpress doesn t make too much mess of it. Have fun.

Back in 2010 our family moved to an island in an archipelago in the very top left of the US s continental 48. Before moving, we did some research regarding high speed network access. There are a number of ISPs in the county, and even one headquartered on our particular island. But we found that the location where we were moving was in a location that was only serviced by 1.5Mbit DSL. We had been spoiled in our previous two locations and had seen bittorrent swarms reach over 1 megabyte (8Mbit) per second. Our bill said 12 down and 2 up and I wouldn t be surprised if we achieved that. At any rate, we were disappointed by the speeds available and I wanted to do something to increase the availability of higher speed network access. Some of my friends from the North American Network Operators Group (NANOG) told me that one way to improve the infrastructure would be to get involved with telecommunications provisioning as a Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC). With the above in mind, I did some research and found that in my state, the authority which certifies and regulates telecommunication companies is the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission (UTC). I found the application forms on their web site, filled them in, filed the appropriate documents with the appropriate departments and received a certificate in the mail shortly thereafter. We have since filed annual reports as required by regulations. And with the regulatory bits out of the way, we re now left with only the technical details. We have established collocation of some equipment near our state s central telecommunications facility at the Westin Building. Technically speaking, the equipment is not in the Westin, but at a facility connected to the Westin by multiple 10Gbit links. Close enough for me. On this equipment, we re running a Debian Squeeze Xen virtual machine and Digium s Asterisk packages:

cjac@sip0:/etc/asterisk$ grep -B1 -A3 Digium /etc/apt/sources.list
#
#  Digium asterisk packages
#
deb http://packages.asterisk.org/deb squeeze main
deb-src http://packages.asterisk.org/deb squeeze main
cjac@sip0:/etc/asterisk$ dpkg -l   grep digium
ii  asterisk                           1:1.8.11.1-1digium1~squeeze  Open Source Private Branch Exchange (PBX)
ii  asterisk-config                    1:1.8.11.1-1digium1~squeeze  Configuration files for Asterisk
ii  asterisk-core-sounds-en-gsm        1.4.21-1digium1~squeeze      asterisk PBX sound files - English/gsm
ii  asterisk-voicemail                 1:1.8.11.1-1digium1~squeeze  simple voicemail support for the Asterisk PBX

We saved up our nickles and dimes to purchase a 24-port analog telephony adapter (ATA). At the recommendation of one of the denizens of the #asterisk IRC channel on Freenode, we decided on the GrandStream GXW4024. It is pretty simple to configure them to register with the Asterisk server using SIP. The only problem we had was getting the RTP streams, and specifically their dynamically negotiated service ports, to traverse the NATting routers. We currently have no public IPv4 address space at the facility which hosts the ATA and so the rest of the internet sees all traffic originating from this facility as sourced from a single IP address. In order for this to work, the edge NAT/router device (in our case, BIG-IP LTM) needs to map its external L4 ports (TCP and UDP) to the ports of internal hosts so that traffic can flow correctly. This works fine for traffic which originates from internal hosts and is destined to hosts on the outside, but does not work so well when hosts on the outside wish to establish connections to hosts on the inside. Call management sessions established with the SIP protocol fall in the former category, but call media (voice, video, txt) sessions established with the RTP protocol fall into the latter; the host and port used to carry the media data are negotiated during the SIP session and the media socket is established out of band. The problem occurs when the call server (on the outside) attempts to establish an RTP stream with the caller (on the inside). The call server attempts to connect to the caller using the IP address from which it connected. The problem is that this address belongs to the NATting router, not the caller, and the router is not expecting the incoming request. To get around the NAT problem, we temporarily configured an OpenVPN tunnel to extend our L2 network segment. Our long-term solution will be to provision an Asterisk server in the same facility as the ATA and then register with it instead of the server in the exterior facility. Calls will then be switched at the local facility and the upstream link will be established using the IAX2 protocol, which does not suffer from the same NAT problems. All of the above provides us with the ability to make voice calls between the 24 channels of the ATA and any other SIP client which happens to be registered with our call server. This is all well and good, but we want to allow our customers to call the rest of the world. Enter our upstream provider, Threshold Communications, Inc. These folks are experienced and professional and have helped us successfully establish both outbound and inbound calling for very reasonable monthly costs. The call quality is indistinguishable from the lines provisioned by the local bell company, and inter-operates flawlessly with the Asterisk call server stack. Because calls transit our Asterisk server, we can add additional features such voicemail, speech to text, DTMF-driven menus, or call forwarding, for instance. We could even theoretically set up autopatch service using amateur frequencies or launch perl scripts to automate arbitrary fancyness. Our next step is to finish configuration of our 12-channel ZyXEL AAM1212 DSLAM modules so that we can deliver ADSL service over the same copper pairs as we deliver voice.

So, I m taking vacation this week and next. Here s a (partial) list of tasks that are left to do:

• Visit BC for NANOG 55
• Work with Threshold Communications to verify interop is working as well as it seems to be
• Make sure the UTC has acknowledged receipt of our 2012 filing
• Complete move of storage from old chassis to new-ish hot-ish-ness
• Bring one of these chassis online to handle VoIP for the wireless L2 segment
• Bring a 1600 online at our Bartel POP
• Take the disk image created for the above and duplicate it 3x for California-based 44Net nodes
• Bring the VMs whose storage was being provisioned via iSCSI back online
• get the ATA and DSLAM online and hook up the customers who are demanding service.
• Call CenturyLink and explain to them that I WILL report them to the consumer protection department of the Utilities and Transportation Commission if they do not take action to correct their failure in regard to contract negotiation and accounting.

That s probably enough, if not too much. Here s some of the bits I ve done this week:

• Re-establish IPv6 connectivity for many of my hosts
• Twiddled quite a few bits on the BIG-IPs
• Set up a home brew provisioning server for some 1120E hardware SIP phones I ve got laying around (DHCP + TFTP + a bunch of twiddly firmware bits and config files ping me if you want them)
• Did a lot of updates to the DNS infrastructure. We have slave DNS servers in all of our DCs now
• hung out on IRC a lot
• Started accepting IPv4 HTTP requests for web.colliertech.org in Bothell instead of Tukwila
• Put together some perl & php for the WA NGB to help with their online recruiter finder
• Reduced size of SAN base OS (squeeze) to something that fits on a CF
• Moved disks from old SAN chassis to the new one.
• Booting from CF now instead of first partition of first disk in array
• Discovered small (~3k bytes) disk error on one of the RAID members
• Made complete backup of entire array using dd
• Replaced failing disk and began recovery, with great thanks to the linux-raid list

  md0 : active raid5 sdg2[6] sdc2[4] sdb2[3] sdd2[2] sdf2[1] sde2[0]
        4864240640 blocks level 5, 64k chunk, algorithm 2 [6/5] [UUUUU_]
        [=========>...........]  recovery = 46.9% (456668928/972848128) finish=1461.9min speed=5884K/sec
  

• Brought up 802.11g AP for wireless VoIP service
• Configured asterisk to accept 24 SIP lines from GrandStream ATA
• Brought GrandStream ATA online. Currently sending SIP/RTP calls over OpenVPN tunnel to avoid NAT issues. This will be corrected when the new asterisk server is brought online. I ll have it connect to the core with IAX, and it will be on the same physical L2 as the GrandStream and 1120Es
• recovered RAID-1 array on laptop
• made sure KE7KMO is still functioning

And probably some other stuff ;-)

See also parts 1, 2, and 3. I am a person that enjoys food that s different from what s at home, and Rhodes didn t disappoint. Terah and I used to live close to an excellent Greek restaurant in Indianapolis, so we were already familiar in some way with the food. But there isn t any Greek restaurant at all in the Wichita area, so we missed it. Our favorite restaurant on Rhodes was Kalypso of Lindos. Everything there was just excellent, starting with the saganaki, one of my favorite Greek appetizers. I had yogurt with honey there for dessert both times we visited, a surprisingly tasty desert. Like many restaurants in Lindos, Kalypso had the option of eating on the rooftop, or at ground level. We ate on the roof, which had a nice view of the Lindos Acropolis. Being outdoors, there were sometimes cats around. This kitten enjoyed playing games with my shoestrings for awhile. Kalypso is at a 17th century captain s house. Here s a view of it from the rooftop: We, of course, had the chance to eat at quite a few different places during our visit, and I d go on way too long if I mentioned them all. Terah particularly enjoyed the gelaterie.gr ice cream shop in the square in Rhodes. We liked our lunch at Maria s Taverna in Lindos and enjoyed chatting with the staff there. I recently talked about shopping in Mexico, and perhaps learned a thing or two from that. I won t say we never buy them, but in general we don t buy souvenirs like t-shirts, plastic things made in China, etc. We prefer to buy local. Those items tend to be higher quality, more interesting, and we like to support the local economy. We also don t have lots of room for things, so we try to choose carefully. So it was something of a surprise to Terah, and perhaps even to me, when I suggested we go shopping one day. Terah typically enjoys shopping a lot more than I do. Anyhow, off we went to Lindos. One of the first things that had caught our eye in Lindos was the shop selling glass. But it wasn t just any glass; it appeared to be made with some sort of layered process, and has a distinctly three-dimensional feel to it. As you move around, it looks like the background shifts. We wound up with this item, which was made in Athens: By the time we visited Lindos specifically for shopping, we had a good feel for when the busy times of day were, so we could avoid them. It gave us the opportunity to visit with people and when they weren t busy, many shopkeepers liked to chat. I enjoy hearing people s stories and we heard several. One ceramics shop the Musa Shop -caught Terah s eye. They had such incredible and beautiful pieces outside that we just had to go in. We wound up with two pieces from there, both in shades of blue: Both remind me of the Aegean Sea and the deep blue sky of Rhodes. And then, as we were walking along, I pointed inside a shop and said to Terah, Hey, those look different. We went in, and eventually wound up buying these: The appearance, and even feel, of them is unlike anything I d seen. Quite interesting. And seeing those particular items in the Lakis Place shop led to making some new friends I ll write about it in the next post.

Hey there gentle readers, I am completing paperwork on behalf of Collier Technologies LLC which is required (as described in chapter 19.34 RCW [pdf]) to file with the state of Washington to become a licensed Certification Authority. CPS (signed) Look! I m also running a(n unrecognized) repository! Neat, huh? C.J.

El Reg reviewed the Archos 705 yesterday. They only gave it 50%, which I think is a little harsh. I bought one of these back in November when they first came out, as something to help easy my daily commute by train. I have to say I don't regret the purchase; while there are various niggles that annoy me it basically does what I want. My main drive was the size of the screen. There are plenty of options available if you want in the region of 4", but I wanted something bigger that could still be shoved in a bag without any hassle. The 705's 7" screen is great. I can sit it on the tray table on the train and it gives a clear viewable image that doesn't leave me squinting trying to see it. The second concern was the battery life. At 7" you start to get into the UMPC area. However there didn't seem to be anything around that both offered enough battery life and had the grunt to decode DivX. I need a guaranteed 2hrs (ideally a bit longer) so I can watch something without being interrupted. I've certainly had over 3hrs on the Archos and various reviews claim it'll do 5hr for video without problems. Archos call the 705 a DVR. I've no idea why; I certainly wouldn't consider it one. I have the DVR station, but I've only used it to connect the Archos up to a hotel room TV and never for actually recording anything. There's no tuner (neither analog nor digital), so you need a Freeview/cable/satellite or similar box to provide a signal. Plus it seems pointless to convert a digital TV signal to analog and then for the Archos to have to re-encode it. Much more sane to record TV on your PVR and pull the file off that and onto the 705. Except there you hit a bit of a problem. By default the Archos supports DivX and WMV. To get MPEG2 or H.264 support, or indeed AC3 audio, you need to pay extra for a license that will enable the appropriate codec. This is annoying and I've ended up just using mencoder to convert Freeview records to an Archos friendly format rather than shelling out more for the codecs. Archos do seem to have dropped the ball here. The MPEG2 license fee seems to be $2.50 per device. The TI licensing seems to be about $2 for MPEG2 + AC3. Archos sell the plugin for €19.99. I doubt AC3 licensing is over $15, which rules out Archos merely keeping the cost down for customers by allowing them to pick and chose which codecs they want to avoid paying license fees. The 705 also comes with a web browser. Which, of course, you have to pay for. I ended up getting this thrown in with my 705 + DVR station bundle. It's powered by Opera and reasonable enough. The only time I've really made use of it is while staying in a hotel; it was quite nifty to have the 705 hooked up to the TV and be able to lie on the bed with the keyboard remote control and lookup film times or interesting places to go. Internet access is provided by wifi; if it had bluetooth as well then I might make use of it on the train, but as it is it's not really something I use much. As I said at the start I'm still happy with my purchase. It's not a cheap item, but it has the screen size and battery life I wanted and there wasn't a lot else out that offered both. Having to pay for codecs is a bad move on Archos' part, but I've avoided doing so by re-encoding. If you want something that's a decent media player of this size then the 705 is definitely worth considering; if you're not sure about the size aspect you may be better off with a 605 (the 4.3" screen version) or even something from Cowon (who unfortunately don't seem to have anything in the 7" range). Finally, if you already own a generation 5 Archos device, you might be interested to know that shell access has been obtained. The device is pretty locked down (signed kernel modules, no /dev/mem, signed root cramfs filesystem), but there's an arcwelder exploit to get an ssh login over wifi and an Archos Hacking forum on Archosfans.

I'm sitting in our suite in the Doubletree on Times Square in New York City, catching up with some email and generally trying to pull myself together. It's been a remarkably busy week and this is the first time I've been able to sit down to blog for a while. We moved to our new house at 4690 rue Pontiac last Wednesday, and most of my time last week was taken up either packing things (clothes, computers, dishes), unpacking the same things, or taking things that I didn't want to pack/unpack to various charitable organizations. Our move-in went smoothly -- the hardest part was moving our old fridge and stove to our new house, then moving the fridge and stove and deep freeze from our new house to the old apartment for Julia and Antoine to use. The new house came with a lot of new goodies, too. We bought a new couch for our new livingroom, and a new king-size bed for our new bedroom. On top of all that, I signed us up for Vid otron cable Internet instead of our old reliable Bell Canada DSL, and it's turned out to be quite fast and easy to use. So on top of the excitement of having a new place to live, there have been a lot of new toys to play with. Thankfully, our cats and our daughter have adapted quite well to their new environment. Amita June has a new bedroom, but she's been through so much travel -- hotel rooms and friends' homes -- that she's able to sleep just about anywhere. Topaz and Xe (the cats) don't usually adapt very well, but Maj kept them in the upstairs bathroom for a few days The thing that's surprised me the most about moving into the new house is how seldom we go upstairs. All our bedrooms are downstairs, as well as the new office/den, and we seem to get a lot of our needs met down there. The upstairs area is really really nice, though: lots of light and air. But the stairs are a real energy barrier. I guess my legs are going to get stronger and I'll get used to running up and down them several times a day. Probably the biggest disappointment of the move-in was that our new paint job, which had been so lovingly planned, got pretty marked-up in certain parts of the house -- specifically, the halls and stairs. We'll be doing some touch-up painting ourselves, but it is still kind of a bummer to see all these nicks and scratches on the otherwise pristine walls. tags: moving newhouse 4690ruepontiac

Train in vain We're in New York City for the awards ceremony for the Webby Awards. Wikitravel won the Webby award for best travel Web site of 2007 -- quite an honor. We came right after our move-in, so it feels a little rushed. We're just here for about 72 hours. We'd thought about going down to visit family in New Jersey, but we really need to finish getting unpacked and settled in to the new house. We're planning on coming down for a relaxed family visit in NJ later this summer, instead -- maybe combining it with a trip to the Jersey Shore. Although there are plenty of flights between Montreal and New York, and it's only about a 6- to 8-hour drive, we decided to try something different this time. We took the Adirondack (Amtrak) train, which runs down the shores of Lake Champlain and the Hudson River Valley. My theory was that the train trip would let us stretch our legs, read, and get some work done, and that AJ could run around and enjoy herself, rather than being cooped up in a car or airplane seat. Although the train was the slowest option (it's scheduled as a 9-hour trip), it might end up being the most comfortable. I think the results were mixed. Indeed, the trip was a comfortable one, and Amita June got to run up and down the aisles and climb all over the empty seats. However, we got stopped at the US border due to an elevated terror alert, and what was supposed to be a 30-minute scheduled customs stop dragged into a two-and-a-half hour inspection. By the time we got to New York, we were more than two hours late. Among other things, this meant that I missed the opening cocktail reception for the Webbies, which was kind of a bummer. It was dumping down rain in torrents when we finally got to Penn Station, though, so I think that the rooftop reception probably wasn't all that much fun. I got soaked trying to get us a cab, but we had a decent ride to our hotel -- the functional but unexciting DoubleTree Suites on Times Square. We had a hard time finding a hotel that would be even remotely affordable, in Manhattan, and had junior suite rooms. Suites are great when you're traveling with a toddler -- it means you can put them to bed at 8PM and then go in the other room to stay up the rest of the evening. We had a decent room-service dinner -- Caesar's, nachos, 2 Heinekens -- and crashed out. This morning I woke up to a text message from my friend Ben Cerveny. He's also in New York for a few days -- he figured out that we were both going to be here using the cool Dopplr service. I rousted up Maj and Amita June -- late sleepers, lately -- and we all went down to Greenwich Village to meet Ben at The Grey Dog. The caf had decent coffee and pretty hearty breakfasts. We stayed for about 2 hours. We ambled over to the Center for Architecture to check out a few exhibits and stretch our legs. It turned out to be a great place to bring a toddler -- not too crowded, and pretty noise-tolerant. Amita burned herself out running through the exhibits. We left Ben behind and headed back to the room for naps and computer time. I was going to try to go to the Webby event for film and video tonight, but there was some complicated signup thing I was supposed to do, and I ended up failing to do it. It's probably just as well -- Maj isn't feeling great. So we're going to just get some dinner together and call it an early evening. tags: newyork wikitravel travel

Certifi.ca re-certified For the last month I've had a TODO item on my list: New SSL cert for certifi.ca. Of course, I let it slide and slide -- definitely not an urgent item, right? Well, not until the cert expired last Sunday. Oops. It took me a while to get certifi.ca a new cert -- I wanted to get it with the name of the new corporation I've started to manage my OpenID sites, called Control Yourself, Inc. or, in French, Contr lez-vous, Inc.. (I'm not even sure if contr lez-vous makes any sense, actually.) The folks at Comodo had a hard time with the Quebec corporate registration and asked for a lot of extra documentation, which dragged things out a few days. On top of that, I got distracted by the move, so I haven't had much time to think about SSL certs. But I got the cert late last week, and ended up with another problem: when I replaced the old cert and "ca-bundle" files with the new ones, Apache mysteriously failed to start up -- at all. It just kerploded with no error log information. I was unable to find any documentation on why this would be the case. I spent some extra time debugging this afternoon, and came to an embarrassing conclusion. The program I used to feed a password to Apache (using SSLPassPhraseDialog) was giving it the password for the old key. Doh! Fixing that made Apache start up just fine. I wish I had a good way to attract Google searches for this, but maybe this sentence will work: If your Apache server with mod_ssl fails mysteriously right after startup, make sure that the passphrase is generated correctly. tags: apache certifica comodo sslpassphrasedialog mod_ssl passphrase

Creative Commons shrinks a bit Kudos to Creative Commons, who have retired their controversial Developing Nations and Sampling licenses. Critics have pointed out that all CC licenses allowed a basic universal right -- verbatim, non-commercial copying -- except for the Sampling and DevNations. I think the move has helped to focus CC somewhat. Although Creative Commons started as a way to explore novel methods for letting people share certain rights to their works, this move will set a baseline for what's an acceptable CC license and what's just not enough. As Lawrence Lessig says in the announcement: There is a strong movement to convince Creative Commons that our core licenses at least permit the freedom to share a work noncommercially. Creative Commons supports that movement. We will not adopt as a Creative Commons license any license that does not assure at least this minimal freedom at least not without substantial public discussion. It's a good idea, and I'm glad CC is taking this tack. I hope that those people who've criticized CC in the past for not having such a baseline will take the opportunity for a rapprochement. tags: cc devnations sampling creativecommons richardstallman

Funds for Standout Jobs Congrats to Montreal entrepreneurs Fred Ngo, Ben Yoskovitz, and Austin Hill. Their new high-high-end recruiting engine, Standout Jobs, just got an angel round of funding to the tune of $1.5 million. Yeah, they're only Canadian dollars (see Journal/1 Brumaire CCXV), but that means a lot more today. Fred, Ben and Austin have all done a lot to advance the local technology community. I'm glad to hear that their project is taking the first steps to success. tags: standoutjobs fredngo benyoskovitz austinhill